What Never Will Be
by Thalia Kendall
Summary: He took a sip of the hot liquid, the slightly bitter taste and heat on his tongue oddly matching his mood. Roger Davies is back home after many years, and visits a girl who has married someone else. Angsty one-shot [unhappy ending].


A/N: This has an unhappy ending. Please do not kill me.

Disclaimer: I do not own them, blah blah blah.

~*~

It was one of the first things he found out, because he asked about it. He believed himself prepared, really. Things change, and people change, and after all he'd been away, presumed missing.  
  
The man arrived at the old gray house, in black, his face held calm with the years of doing and hiding.  
  
His mother had hugged him when he came home last night, and her hair was becoming gray. But her eyes were still warm, and as she had cut his hair (which was near his shoulder blades and scruffy), she'd caught him up on everything that was going on.  
  
"Cho got married two years ago."  
  
The words repeated themselves in his mind, a solemn pronouncement given even as she cut the over-long fringe away from his eyes... he'd given such a start that she had to jump back, the tip of the scissors coming dangerously close to ice-blue eyes.   
  
He had no business to be here now.   
  
~*~  
  
And yet, he walked up to the house, as if this were for old times and put a bleakly friendly smile on his face, the unbidden thought springing to his mind that the white lilies of the valley she had planted by the door... he'd given her some, once upon a time in another life, in another world where things turned out like fairy tales.   
  
He knocked on the door, and took a deep breath. How many times had he been here before, and had come in without knocking because they were _that_ close and time seemed infinite? He came as a stranger today, though.   
  
Light footsteps, and then the door opened, his shadow darkening the polished floor. And then his smile froze on his lips, painful like a hinge rusted shut.  
  
She still wore her hair in a braid, and the way her eyes glinted when she recognized him, the way her mouth dropped open slightly in surprise... he couldn't speak.  
  
She did, and her voice broke, even over the two syllables of his name.  
  
And then he was holding her in his arms, sunlight and shadow streaming into her house, both standing exactly in the doorway. He closed his eyes and buried his face in her hair, noticing that it smelled like jasmine, no change there, either. He could almost remember standing like this with her... ten whole years ago. He couldn't _quite_ pretend. She had not changed in appearance, but her back was tense and the years (or something else) had made his voice hoarse.  
  
"I'm glad to see you," her smile up at him, he could tell, wasn't completely real. "I've missed you."  
  
"I've missed you, too."  
  
What more was there to say? She gestured, her hand shaking (a diamond shackle weighing down one slender finger), for him to come in, and he slowly stepped into the gray house, stepping into the narrow foyer.  
  
"I'll get you some tea," she whispered, her voice a bit unsteady. "You... I've not heard from you in _years..._"  
  
Years... five of them, and now he was thirty and she was someone else's. He watched her disappear into the kitchen and looked at the walls of the foyer, somewhat thrown into shadow, a dim prison that was rows of photographs, Cho and her husband, whoever he was, wedding pictures. Dim in this light, but he could make out the white dress...  
  
_The Chinese wear white when someone dies._ She'd told him that once.  
  
He took oddly steady steps, shoes thudding against the floorboards, as he walked into the neat kitchen. Cho's stiff back was turned to him as she slowly removed porcelain teacups from a shelf.   
  
"You like oolong tea, right?" It wasn't really a question, but he made a brief answer in the affirmative anyway. Her hands were shaking badly as she poured, the hot water slopping onto the saucers a bit and biting her lip in pain as the hot water scalded her fingers. It was a few minutes before she brought over his cup to him, that tight smile on her face, both rusty and unused and dead.  
  
He took a sip of the hot liquid, the slightly bitter taste and heat on his tongue oddly matching his mood. "So, I heard you got married."  
  
Her eyes wouldn't meet his, and she gazed at the dead-white surface of the teapot as she nodded. "He's... a good man," her voice came out oddly constrained. "Daniel MacDougal."  
  
His mind usually registered any and all names of enemies, but something wasn't working today.  
  
"I thought you were dead," she suddenly blurted out, her voice choked, "No one knew where you were... the Ministry told me to give up, and my parents..."  
  
His emptied cup hit the saucer with a brittle clatter. "Don't."  
  
She stopped, her lower lip caught between her teeth. His jaw was beginning to ache with holding his mouth firm. When she finally spoke, her voice was barely audible. "My husband is to be home any minute."  
  
How could she have a _husband_, when he loved her like the desert loves water and the poet loves moonlight and a dozen broken hearts? The sky was blue still, and the sun had not set yet. How could the world have taken such a ridiculous turn, and she say 'my husband' with such...  
  
Around the still-warm curves of the teacup his knuckles were turning white, clench, clench.  
  
A loud pop, and someone strode into the kitchen with the assurance that came from reality and good fortune. "Cho darling, where are you?"  
  
The voice was baritone, genial, and Roger forced himself to look up even as Cho gave the newcomer a weak sort of smile from her seat. And Roger felt something in his heart twist like a wrung towel.   
  
Tall, confident, with a cheerful smile and dark hair and blue eyes. He'd seen that same sort of expression before...  
  
...Once upon a time perhaps ten years ago, staring back at him whenever he glanced into a mirror.  
  
Daniel MacDougal gave the other man a friendly but curious look. "And you are...?"  
  
"Roger Davies," the visitor of his wife replied, his voice with an impossibly subtle tension. "I used to know Cho in school."  
  
Cho wouldn't look at either of them.  
  
MacDougal grinned good-naturedly, "Oh, _you're_ Roger Davies! Well glad to meet you at last, Cho had always remarked upon you as one of her closest friends, back in the day."  
  
Roger shook the warm hand that the other man held out, and willed down a bitter smile. If memorizing just how her lips felt underneath his own, under tall old trees, was close friendship... or the secrets shared, the evenings they would sit together, with each other and no one else for warmth and company as they gazed at the cold, deceptively beautiful heavens...  
  
"Yes," he said tersely. Cho smiling with MacDougal, dancing with him in balls... gazing at the stars with MacDougal, allowing him to brush her hair... kissing him, swearing her life to him, sharing his home and bed and board...   
  
He stood suddenly, his lips near white. "I'll go. Lots to do."  
  
He gave a nod to the other man, and the unresponsive raven-haired muse that was Cho... NOT his Cho, and walked back down the gauntlet that was the foyer. The door shut behind him a moment later.  
  
Daniel MacDougal turned to kiss his wife and noticed the liquid glimmering in her coal-dark eyes. Instantly concerned, he laid a hand on Cho's arm.  
  
"What's the matter? What are you crying about, love?"  
  
"Something got in my eye," she lied, quickly blinking the tears away and smiling at him, the beautiful happy grin of a hollow porcelain doll.  
  
There was nothing more that she could say, and it was much later, lying in bed next to her _loving_ husband, her bare arms wrapped around herself but unable to fight the chill, when she turned over and buried her face in her pillow and let the tears fall.


End file.
